Linden Hills

Why is it important that both Willie and Lester are aspiring poets? What role does poetry—and literature—play in the text, and how does it correspond to Naylor’s wider thematic concerns?

In Chapter 2, Lester says that “they’ve all lost touch with what it is to be them” (59). What do you think he means by the phrase “what it is to be them”? Which “they” is he referring to here? What role do the ideas of selfhood and identity play in the text as a whole?

In the text, we learn that Maxwell Smyth has spent his whole life working “to make his blackness disappear” (102). Why would Maxwell want “to make his blackness disappear”? In what ways does Maxwell Smyth contrast with Willie and Lester, and what argument is Naylor making about racial identity?

Linden Hills is centrally concerned with the “them-and-us-thing,” with divisions, groups, and conflict (47). Can you identify specific divisions and groups in the text, and describe the conflict between them? What argument is Naylor making about the world with reference to the “them-and-us-thing”?

Two main narratives run throughout the novel: Willie and Lester’s journey through Linden Hills, and Willa Prescott Nedeed’s imprisonment in the basement of her house. In Willie and Lester’s story, we meet many other characters and learn about their lives; however, Willa’s story is kept apart from the rest and even presented in a different font. Why does Naylor structure the novel in this way? What is she trying to say about Willa’s story, and why is Willa different from the rest?

Willie and Lester’s journey involves a string of characters who live in Linden Hills. Pick one of those characters and describe their role in the text. How do their life and perspective relate to the novel’s wider themes? What do Willie and Lester learn through their interactions with this character?

In Chapter 7, the narrator says, “There would have been no question of smashing in that door if their world were still governed by the rules of cowboys and Indians, knights and dragons—black and white” (299). This statement implies that the novel is not a romanticized account but instead a depiction of realism. However, Naylor draws many analogies between Willie and Lester’s journey and Dante’s Inferno, implying an allegorical nature to the narrative. Do the novel’s realism and its allegory contradict one another, or do they work together? How does Naylor use this allegory to advance the novel’s thematic concerns?

Why don’t Willie and Lester try to help Willa Prescott Nedeed at the end of the novel? Explain this in terms of the novel’s wider thematic concerns and what this action—or inaction—might symbolize.